Chalk Art Made Easy, a picture tutorial

I have been admiring everyone’s chalk art- and I knew when I settled into the loft I wanted a chalkboard wall for sure! The wall that faces my kitchen area seemed like a perfect place to me, and I love that it is big enough to be pretty creative with. I had a few people recommend to get the Benjamin Moore Chalkboard Paint. I am really happy with how well it went on, how it looks and how it is holding up to erasing etc. I definitely recommend it to others!

I played with a fun message for my Loft Warming Party as you can see above, but I did it all freehand and wasn’t 100% in love with it. It’s not a secret that I love typography and letters so- I came up with this super easy way of getting beautiful letters and fonts on my wall.

Anyone can do this!

I hope you find this tutorial helpful, and if you have any questions be sure to post them in the comments and I will answer them for everyone to see!

Step 1: First I set up the words in Adobe InDesign. This is just the program I use for anything text base I am designing, but you can easily use Microsoft Word as well. I set up my document to be 11×17, tabloid. I found a saying I liked on Pinterest, I like how she typeset it as well, so I used this for my inspiration. I typed out my saying. I find it helpful to have different text boxes for each word, or line of text. I had a visual in my head of how I was going to set it up on my chalkboard, so I kept that in mind for where I wanted to use different fonts etc. Remember you want this to be large so your font size is going to be larger then you are used to using, “thankful” above is 200pt. The text you are reading here is probably 12pt. Once you have this set up the way you like it (probably on multiple pages) I exported it as a PDF – this ensures the fonts will be readable by any printer etc. I then called my local Staples and asked the Copy Center for their email address. I emailed them the PDF file. I clearly stated I wanted one copy of each page, on 11×17 and black and white. Mine cost me 60 cents!! They can even print larger then 11×17- just ask them!

Step 2: I then cut the words apart and taped them on the chalk board wall to figure out placement. I used washi tape, as I knew this wouldn’t harm the paint. Snap a pic with your iPhone so you can refer to it for placement.

Step 3: One by one take a bit of your words down, and rub chalk onto the back of the paper, then tape it back up on your chalkboard wall where it was. Repeat until you have all the pieces with chalk on the back, and taped back up in place. Remember you snapped the pic of the placement with your smart phone 😉 use that for a reference.

Step 4: Take a pencil and trace each word, then just quickly scribble in each letter. Don’t be too picky about this step- just enough to transfer the chalk to the wall in the shape of each word. Below is detail of  how rough I was with tracing each letter.

Step 5: Gently take away the paper print outs. You can see above and below how messy it will look, don’t panic! As you can see below I chose not to scribble in the larger fonts and this turned out ok when I went to fill in the letters.

Step 6: Using chalk fill in your words. You will want to have a heavy hand and draw over the same spot a few times to really fill them in. I then took a small paint brush and held a mug of water, cleaning up the chalk dust that was around the letters. You can see below how well it came out! I free handed the pennant around the word “always” mind you it was close to midnight at this point, the night before Thanksgiving and after a day of cooking, cleaning and freelance web work I was getting tired 😉

Remember: this is chalk art- embrace the chalk dust and smudges!!

You can see how nice it looks on my wall, and in my loft. Pictured here are also the super easy place cards I made for Thanksgiving dinner, inspired by pinterest of course!